“[I’m] furious,” the San Diego Chargers coach told reporters. “It’s a major disappointment. You get the lead we had, and to fall apart — [it’s] a major disappointment. Frustration is an understatement. I can’t say right now in this microphone how I really, truly feel.”

McCoy’s reaction was understandable, because his Chargers are currently in a historic stretch of late-game failure. Last season — McCoy’s third in San Diego as head coach — the Chargers lost 2.6 games’ worth of win probability added (WPA) in the fourth quarter or overtime, trailing only the New York Giants (-2.8) and tied with the Dallas Cowboys. (WPA measures the swing in each team’s chances of winning a game with each play, and it can be added up to isolate how — and when — a team helped or hurt its chances of winning.)

This goes beyond simple “if the game ended after three quarters”-type stuff to encompass many types of bungling that can make a game closer than it had previously been. If a team has a 75 percent chance of winning with six minutes left but then throws a pick-six to put its odds at 20 percent, that’s 0.55 games’ worth of lost win probability. So 2.6 games is a lot. And the team has nearly matched that total already this year, losing 2.1 games of WPA in the first four games of the season. Added together, that two-year total of -4.7 WPA in the fourth quarter or overtime ranks 19th-worst by any team in a two-season span since the Super Bowl era began in 1966.

YEAR 1

YEAR 2

TOTAL

YEAR

TEAM

GAMES

4Q/OT WPA

GAMES

4Q/OT WPA

4Q/OT WPA

1

1996-97

Oakland

16

-2.7

16

-4.1

-6.8

2

2000-01

San Diego

16

-3.8

16

-2.5

-6.3

3

1999-00

Dallas

17

-3.6

16

-2.1

-5.7

4

1993-94

Washington

16

-1.8

16

-3.9

-5.6

5

2011-12

Philadelphia

16

-3.7

16

-1.7

-5.4

6

1985-86

Buffalo

16

-2.5

16

-2.9

-5.4

7

1979-80

St. Louis

16

-2.0

16

-3.2

-5.2

8

2014-15

Tennessee

16

-3.2

16

-1.9

-5.1

9

2011-12

San Diego

16

-1.5

16

-3.6

-5.1

10

1995-96

New York

16

-2.7

16

-2.3

-5.0

11

1997-98

Indianapolis

16

-1.8

16

-3.2

-5.0

12

2007-08

St. Louis

16

-2.4

16

-2.6

-5.0

13

2000-01

Carolina

16

-1.6

16

-3.2

-4.9

14

1995-96

Baltimore

16

-2.4

16

-2.4

-4.8

15

1970-71

Cincinnati

16

-1.0

14

-3.8

-4.8

16

1988-89

Dallas

16

-2.3

16

-2.4

-4.7

17

1994-95

Washington

16

-3.9

16

-0.9

-4.7

18

1989-90

Minnesota

17

-2.1

16

-2.6

-4.7

19

2015-16

San Diego

16

-2.6

4

-2.1

-4.7

20

1994-95

Houston

16

-3.0

16

-1.6

-4.6

Worst 2-year stretches by WPA in 4th quarter/OT since 1966

Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com

And again, that’s comparing this season’s Chargers, four games into their schedule, with teams that had many more opportunities to blow games. On a per-game basis, the 2015-16 Chargers have lost more WPA in the fourth quarter or OT than any other team of the Super Bowl era did over a two-year stretch:

YEARS

TEAM

CHANGE IN WIN PROB. AFTER 3Q

1

2015-16*

San Diego

-23.3

2

1996-97

Oakland

-21.2

3

2000-01

San Diego

-19.7

4

1993-94

Washington

-17.6

5

1999-00

Dallas

-17.4

6

2011-12

Philadelphia

-16.9

7

1981-82

Pittsburgh

-16.8

8

1985-86

Buffalo

-16.7

9

1979-80

St. Louis

-16.2

10

1970-71

Cincinnati

-16.0

Worst 2-year WPA-per-game runs in 4Q/OT since 1966

Includes playoff games.
*Only includes the first four games of the 2016 season.

Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com

Of course, McCoy and the Chargers also have more opportunities to reverse this trend. Since 1978 (the advent of the NFL’s 16-game schedule),1 fourth-quarter and OT performance by WPA over a team’s first four games hasn’t really been indicative of how the team would perform for the rest of the season.2 This suggests that teams who begin the year by bleeding points and WPA late in games aren’t inherently doomed to choke forever (though the Chargers’ two-year trend might be more damning than usual).

But the damage of these first four weeks has already been done. Now the only question for the embattled McCoy is whether he can keep his job long enough to be at the helm when San Diego’s WPA problems eventually work themselves out.

Footnotes

And excluding the strike-shortened 1982 and 1987 seasons.

The correlation between a team’s per-game WPA in the fourth quarter or OT through the season’s first four games and the same figure over the rest of the season was effectively zero.